art-time-collective

Greetings once more, fellow ArtTimers.

Today’s exhibit consists of a rectangular sheet made of polystyrene (type 6 plastic, just like chinese food containers), which undergoes a fantastic transformation when exposed to heat. Shrinky Dinks reduce uniformly to approximately 5/8ths their starting size, retaining the colour of felt-tipped markers and various other colouring supplies. What does this mean for the intrepid artist? It means that he or she can make an elaborately-detailed art work and then shrink it, with all of the designs staying true to scale!

Take, for example, the Amanita muscaria mushroom, which was also featured in my previous post. If one were to draw such a thing with marker and punch a hole at the top of it, it might look something like this:

If one then proceeded to place these babies on an oven tray lined with paper, stick them in the oven for approximately 3 minutes at 325 F, pull them out and flatten them against the tray using another sheet of paper and an evenly-distributed weight (e.g. a book), then they would be ready within a minute. And if one were bold enough to add some earring hooks… SHAZAM:

Amanita muscaria earrings for your sweetheart. Hypothetically speaking, of course. One would have to be unfathomably awesome to do such a thing.

In other Shrinky Dink news:

“Professor Michelle Khine (University of California) has applied Shrinky Dinks to create tiny structures for the application of microfluidics to topics such as stem cell research.”

Shrinky Dinks may one day save your life.

Filed under: Shrinky Dinks, wearable